Year: 2009

Ok, first gripe is this. I loathe the word upcoming. Upcoming is coming up all over the place, but especially in news emails about new poetry releases. It’s a clumsy, awkward word with a horrible rhythm, and somehow it conveys a kind of coded message that something (or or more likely someone) ‘upcoming‘ is meant to excite you in some way. Upcoming conveys not just ‘about to arrive’ but also ‘about to arrive and be devastating’.

Except all we are talking about is a new publication, which may be interesting, but as one of several upcoming thousand that month, is unlikely to devastate anybody. The weeds in my garden are upcoming. My breakfast was very nearly upcoming on Friday when the migraine struck.

I often admire neologisms because they can not only be apt but also fun. Upcoming is not admirable. I vote for its abolition.

I’ve written far too much about this now, which means I’ll have to start another post to say what I was actually going to say about the reviews. This is what happens when ranting is in your genes. News on Sphinx reviews coming up (sic) next.

I’m feeling bad today.
I’m going to STAMP and shout
Because you see it’s raining hard
So that I can’t go out.
STAMP STAMP STAMP!
STAMP, STAMP, STAMP!
Oh I’m a naughty little Noddy
And I don’t love anybody.
STAMP STAMP STAMP!
STAMP, STAMP, STAMP!
SO THERE!

This was on a 45rpm record we had when children and I’ve been singing it today. Not because it’s raining hard but because of the STAMPS! The price went up, you see, at the start of April, so all my usual calculations don’t work and here I am trying to stick appropriate stamps on approximately 180 envelopes. It’s trying. It’s very trying.

Before, my main postage for posting out one issue of Sphinx, plus bits and pieces, inland in the UK was 66p (second class). I had a method of doing this comprising one first class stamp (36), one second class stamp (27) and three penny stamps. The penny stamps used to cause a problem sometimes because my local post office didn’t always have enough of them. I went into town one day and bought ten quids worth. The man had to get them out of the safe, which had a locking alarm. I had to wait until it let him in.

Anyway, all that’s by the by now because the postage charges have changed. They have gone up a LOT. My large letter second class postage (which is how most Sphinxes go out) is now 76p (ten pence up). First class is 90p. Sigh.

Sending one to Nigeria (a LONG way away) costs only £1.93, which strikes me as disproportionate when it’s 76p to Edinburgh, just down the road. But who am I to comment? I should be grateful I can send them to Nigeria at all. Anyway, that brings me to the issue of how to make up the stamps.

The Royal Mail is obviously not aware that I post out hundreds of packets a year which come into their Large Letter 100g-250gm+ weight. If they were, surely they would produce a stamp — even two stamps for this weight, one for 76p (large letter second class) and one for 90p (large letter first class).

Actually, there is one for 90p, and there’s a reason for that which is nothing to do with posting large letters in the UK: it’s to do with the price of a global letter stamp which was 81 and is now 90p. However, sending them all out first class is quite expensive. I spent £150 on postage yesterday, and it won’t cover the whole lot. Oh dear, I’m going to depress myself soon.

But this brings me back to my 76p. How was I going to make it up this time? One first class + one second class now comes to 69 which means in penny stamps I’d need another 7. A lot of licking and sticking. The first and seconds come in self-stickable sheets (no licking necessary) but the pennies are another kettle of stamp.

The obvious thing to do is one ordinary second class stamp (30), plus a large letter second (47) which brings me to 77, exactly one penny too much. One penny too much. This seriously annoys me. It’s the principle of the thing. Why does the easiest option end up costing slightly more? I go in constant fear of understamping and therefore frequently overstamp. You don’t get money back for putting too many stamps on envelopes!

Now there might have been a particularly convenient option, namely one new large letter first (61), plus one 15p stamp. Yes — exactly 76p! However, the Royal Mail, in its infinite wisdom, has just abolished the 15p stamp. I can’t remember what you can get now – 17 or 14. Not 15 anyway. They have been withdrawn. Liz, in the local postoffice (shhh — this is a secret) sold me 200 of the withdrawn 15p stamps, and that’s what I’ve been using, but I’ll never get any more. Never more, never more.

Ironically, local post offices are actively discouraged from selling stamps at all. They are supposed to print labels because that way Post Office Counters, or whatever they are called, makes more money. Guess how long it would take them to print my labels? I’d be standing there for two days. As it is, they already weigh and print all sorts of odd parcels for me. And occasionally hide when they see me coming.

Yes, I know you can print labels online and pay by credit card. You also have to put in the weight and address for each recipient. It would take me even longer sitting at a computer and besides, my address labels are already printed and ready to go, saved and updated with my mailing list. Online label processing may be worth it for Ebay sellers posting parcels which are all worth significant amounts (although to get proof of posting they still have to go into a post office and get them processed).

In my case, hundreds of small value parcels don’t seem to fit the online system. My time is the single most valuable thing. But this stamp business is very stupid indeed. Customer friendly? It’s customer hostile.

Grrrr. STAMP, STAMP, STAMP!

Picked the magazine up from the printer today. It is bright yellow this time around, with a black flyleaf. Very waspy! And inside, for the first time, the wonderful Savage Chickens are in yellow. This is because now I know I can’t afford to keep producing the magazine beyond issue 12, I think I may as well be hung for a sheep as well as a lamb. Or an organic turkey as well as a free-range chicken.

I think it’s an interesting issue — but then I’m biassed. There’s an interview with George Simmers entirely in heroic couplets. Well, they started heroic. And they ARE all rhyming couplets. Pope would have been proud of us.

Other interviews are with Jane Commane and Matt Nunn (Nine Arches), Peter Carpenter on Worple and Anthony Delgrado on bluechrome.

Oh, and Joy Howard has a feature about Grey Hen, which is being so very successful with its first anthology –A Twist of Malice. A great book — such fun to read. And there’s Colin Will on where Calder Wood Press is going.

I’m starting the mass post-out tomorrow morning. Spent three hours this morning updating the mailing list and doing the sticky labels. If you’ve ordered a copy and it hasn’t arrived in the next week, let me know.

A week beside the Falls of Dochart has taken years off me. I’m only 46 this week. Last week I was 55. Of course it won’t last long, though you never quite know.

Sleep is very good for people. Sleeping beside an old river is extra good – waking to the rush of water doing what it has done for a very long time. And we went to see the Fortingall Yew, which is enough to give anyone pause for thought. That ancient tree is not a just a bit old. It is mega-ancient. It’s reckoned to have been there at least five thousand years. Some people think a lot longer.

Anyway, when you’re feeling a little old and weary, it makes you think. I spent a lot of the week reading the poems of Willie Soutar, the Perth poet. He fitted very well into Killin. I’ve been circling around him for years and I got closer this time than I’ve been. Poor chap didn’t live to be old, and his final thirteen years were spent in bed, because the spondylitis affecting his spine rendered him immobile. To add insult to injury, tuberculosis finished him off a good ten years younger than I am now. He remained remarkably cheerful, almost sinisterly positive.

One of the things that appeals to me about him is the odd mixture of poems he felt bound to produce. Lots of them were thoroughly unsuitable for a career poet. Many are what he called ‘Bairnrhymes’ – children’s poems in Scots. Lots of them are marvellous. Then there are the ‘Whigmaleeries’ – oddities, anecdotes, humorous stories about people, again in Scots. There are serious lyrics, in English. And some in Scots. I think he writes best in Scots: at his best in that tongue he is superb. If you didn’t already love the sound of Scots lilt and language, you would after getting a little Soutar by heart. He is not like anybody else.

Then I lost a tooth. Well, half of it. All I did was bite into a small tomato and out it came. The other half is waiting for my dentist. It was a rotten-looking thing. That tooth was over fifty years old though. I guess it has done its time, done good work for me. I fell to thinking of all the bits of my body that have gone over the years – teeth, the odd fallopian tube, a bit of height, the vivid colour of my hair which I hated so much when I was young. Willie Soutar reflected on the fact that at least he would die with his teeth in good shape. I’d rather outlive mine, on balance.

Anyway, he also wrote a lot of riddles, and here is one of them. The answer (I like them better when I know the answer) is Age. (Oh ‘stecher and boo” is stagger and bow. You should be able to get the rest okay.)

You’ll gang monie a mile wi it
And it’s licht upon your back:
But whan you’ve haik’d a while wi it
You’ll ken ye carry a pack.

The folks wha travel far wi it
Begin to stecher and boo; 
Sin the langer that ye are wi it
The wechtier it maun grow.

Sphinx is finally committed to print. Two proof copies this time, because I can never finalise anything properly. It will have its chickens in yellow this time round – splashing out – and a daffodil yellow cover. Tying up the last po-ratings today and double-checking my arithmetic.

Meanwhile, I still haven’t got back to some of the poets from my December reading ‘window’. That should happen in the next two weeks, since it’s college holidays. There’s some good stuff sitting in my box.

Away tomorrow to visit the splishy splashy Falls of Dochart for a few days. If it rains, they will be superb. If it doesn’t, walks will occur. A large box of books is packed, though since 90% of it is poetry, I may not get far. Sometimes, it’s like having eaten too much chocolate – you can’t face the sight of any of any more. Oh, but better not admit that. The Muse might hear…

Only books to pack, no laptop (my other half says he will leave me if I get one). Holidays, so far as he is concerned, don’t have computers on them. I think he’s right. I was always a letter-writer by nature, and on holiday with pen and paper, I’m happy as Larry. Who was Larry?

Hours spent today tidying up piles of publications and clearing the bed and the floor in the spare room, both of which were practically invisible… That means there is now room for the next volumes, which will materialise quite soon.

Gotta read Gill McEvoy on Paula Jennings.

Her blog link is on the blogroll but also http://redbotinki.blogspot.com/. For some reason WordPress won’t let me add this as a live link today. That’s technology for you… H

Another ground-breaking moment in public exhibitionism. I was reading with Mike Stocks for the National Poetry Association of Scotland this week and I had that devil-may-care attitude which in some people (I am one of them) is nurtured by sheer exhaustion. So I decided to read the companion poem to my How (Not) to Get Your Poetry Published. It does not appear inside that little volume, but it is certainly a kind of offshoot. It is titled The Poetry Submission Carol and belongs to the ‘unsuitable’ genre.

This work of art has not yet seen the light of print, although Martin Parker thinks he will use it in Lighten Up Online in the Summer, once he has got my latest set of adjustments, which he doesn’t yet know about.

You see this poem follows the pattern of that memorable ditty ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, although in my case, it starts “The first time I tried it / I sent my poetry / To Picador (Paterson. D.)”

Those perceptive readers amongst you will note that this carol (like most carols) is actually supposed to be carolled i.e. sung. So I decided to sing it. During my rehearsal at home, I discovered (predicably) that although it looked okay on paper, it didn’t totally sing okay. I had to change bits. Now it is much better, and towards the end, it is deeply and darkly satisfying to anyone who has ever experienced a smidgeon of bitterness towards uncaring poetry publishers. All it requires is a person who can sing.

About thirty years ago I could sing a bit — and not too badly, provided a few other people were singing along. But when you don’t do this kind of thing for decades, the voice crumbles. Still, I decided to go for it, and sang all thirteen (sic) verses with gusto. There was even a wee element of people merrily joining in with the last line.

So there we go. My reputation as a serious poet one stage further down the tubes. And now they know I can’t sing…

Mike wisely did not try to warble. However, he read masterfully. He is an expert sonneteer, who can turn that form to almost any end. There are poems in his sonnet collection Folly which make you laugh. The one he referred to as his ‘signature poem’ makes me cry. And the unpublished one about breasts, written when he was twenty-four, was a tour de force.

Those of you who’ve read Sphinx 10 will know all about the pilot po-rating system which now manifests itself at the end of some of the pamphlet reviews in the archive in the shape of a little Sphinx with a certain number of stripes. Ten stripes is super-great and if anybody ever gets that kind of rating from three reviewers I would want to read that publication. I would probably want to read a nine too. Seven is pretty damn good. Five is not half bad. One stripe is oh dear oh dear oh dear.

But it’s more complicated than that. And better, too. What I intend to do in future is to secure three reviews for each poetry pamphlet featured on the website. Each of the three reviewers will also rate the publication and from their rating a ‘stripe’ aggregate will be derived.

I will also link to any other reviews on the net, provided publishers, readers or poets alert me to those.

This is a very comprehensive review option — the best I’ve heard of. It will work in the interests of good quality work, I think. However, it will probably do the reverse for some of the weaker publications, at which point I shall get hate mail. Sigh.

Some worthy publications may not come out as top stars. But that’s not necessarily doom. Thankfully we don’t all want (or need) to win Britain’s (or any other country) Got Talent. Poetry doesn’t (or shouldn’t) work like that. It is an art.

The stripe rating, though a bit alarming in some ways, is not the be-all and end-all either. I’ve often found a single poem I love in a pamphlet which I don’t rate highly as a whole, and in that case, it will be possible to draw attention to that in the review.

Ok. Here’s how it will work.

If you want a publication reviewed on the Sphinx site, you will need – obviously – to send three copies. If you can spare four, I will get the Common Reader or Young Reader to take a look too and throw in their tuppence worth. This sounds demanding, but it is demanding at this end too. It means lots of posting copies to reviewers, lots of hard work from reviewers, lots of collating, editing, website organisation and so on.

I need to limit the material we handle to some extent. So here are some ‘rules’ defining what, for the purposes of this site, will be considered as ‘pamphlets’ or ‘chapbooks’ eligible for review:

• single-author publications of between 20 and 36 pages (excluding preliminaries);
• saddle-stitched, stapled or sewn publications (perfect bound publications are unlikely to fit the category);
• publications must be ISBN numbered, though self-publications are not excluded;
• pamphlets must be in print, available for purchase and published within twelve months of being submitted for review.

Each rating is out of ten. The reviewers return their rating to me. I add them up and divide by four. Bingo. I may (haven’t decided yet) also publish the rating (not as a logo but as a number, like ice-skating) for each category, since that’s also quite interesting. The review system will itself be reviewed as we go along.

Please pass on the word that things have changed if you know anyone sending in pamphlets for review or thinking about it. Otherwise, I may feel morally bound to post them back, which may create another rant about stamps.

The pdf files have gone to the printers! It will be late but this magazine WILL appear.

Watch this space.

April will be the kindest month…

Sarah Hymas posted a lovely response to Paula Jennings’ pamphlet Out of the Body of the Green Girl on Tuesday 17th, February – for some reason I’m not able to insert a hyperlink into this message today, but the link to her blog is on the blogroll list to the right of this post. Nice blog too. She describes herself as ‘poet, editor and anti-hoovering campaigner’…

Then later today The Frogmore Papers 73 arrives. Here Louisa Michel says Frances Corkey Thompson’s The Long Acre “draws careful attention to the effortless and yet vital teachings of nature. With poetic grace she is able to examine the simple lives of birds and beetles, and use these explorations to identify how and what it is we humans keep on missing.” I like the reference to care and grace, both words that feel completely right for Frances.

She calls Slug Language (Anne Caldwell) “an intimate collection”, “words of desire, domesticity and death, and with a ceaseless vitality”. Yeay! That’s good.

And of From the Body of the GG, (see above and picture) she says:

“Delightfully uplifting, Jennings celebrates the numerous pleasures, small though they may be, which life grants. Scorning another for being: ‘…always one step ahead, your tight track ribboning behind you‘ she expresses her intent to take heart in every waking moment, ‘Here it is,’ she writes, just as ‘life says‘.

Reviews in Frogmore Papers are often very brief but they have a lovely sparkle to them. And of course it is a characterful publication, one of the stalwarts. It has been going for ages and preserved its own modestly irrepressible character all this time in true small-magazine tradition. May its shadow never grow shorter!